Closed for Fumigation
by Sway2
Summary: The Talon is closed. Guess why. Chlex
1. Default Chapter

Closed for Fumigation  
  
Sway  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Smallville. but I'm working on it, ask me in a few years.  
  
A/N: this was inspired by my reaction when I found out that my own local coffee shop was closed for Boxing Day. That sucked so I thought I'd put Chloe through the same thing. This is just friendship and the same rules apply to this as with 'Over it.' It's only friendship and Lex has a sense of humour.  
  
Chloe marched through the door of the Luthor ancestral home with eyes searching for the young Luthor that lived there. Lex, attracted by the noise she was making appeared on top of the stairs of the room she was in, and started to descend. "Miss Sullivan?"  
  
"Mr Luthor." She said meeting him halfway on the stairs.  
  
"Is something the matter?" he asked alarmed at her tone.  
  
"Yes, actually there is." Chloe announced. "The Talon is closed."  
  
Lex looked perplexed for a second before understanding what she had said. "Yes, it is."  
  
"Okay, I don't think you heard." Chloe stated incensed by his relaxed tone. "The *TALON* is *CLOSED*"  
  
"I heard." Lex assured her, guiding her down the stairs. "The Talon is closed."  
  
"Yes. And I'm asking.WHY????" Chloe asked, frantic.  
  
"For fumigation." Lex answered, sitting her on the lounge chair, seeing she seemed unable to seat herself.  
  
"I read that on the sign smartass." Chloe retorted. "But you can't close it. It's my oxygen. The air that I breathe. I can't not have coffee."  
  
"Miss Sullivan, I'm sure that you will be able to survive the three days it will take. You still have-"  
  
"Three days?? THREE days? As in, count them-" she held up three fingers "three??"  
  
"Yes three. I'm not looking forward to having a lawsuit on my hands for hospitalised teens after they breathed in the toxic air." Lex answered. "As I was saying, you still have the Beanery."  
  
"You know how Lana found that dirt on the Beanery?? Guess who found it. I know what's on that report and I am never drinking their coffee again." Chloe replied. "I'd rather risk re-admittance to the hospital by toxic fumes."  
  
"Just asking, why didn't you go to Lana with this little discovery?" Lex asked leaning back in his chair, avoiding her not so subtle plea to allow her into the shop.  
  
"I did. She pleaded innocent and sent me to you." Chloe glared at him.  
  
"What's going on?" Clark asked, poking his head around the door.  
  
"What, did I forget to lock the door?" Lex muttered to himself before standing and greeting his friend. "Chloe's caffeine stream is turning back into her blood stream." At Clark's blank look he explained further. "She has just pointed out the fact that the Talon was closed."  
  
"A heinous crime." Clark smirked.  
  
"It is!!" Chloe stood. "Oh. You were making fun of me. Fine. I see I'm getting no where talking to you-" she said picking up her bag and glaring at Lex who smirked back. "so I'll just be working on my slow and painful death by poisonous coffee in the Beanery." She said and stormed out of the castle.  
  
"Interesting friend you got there Clark." Lex said watching the door slam, confirming her departure.  
  
"I sure know how to pick them." Clark said, smiling at Lex.  
  
  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Chloe sat in the Beanery staring at the cup that contained her latte. She hadn't touched it. She watched the few whips of steam floating out of her cooling mug, imagining the green smoke that symbolised poison in the Saturday morning cartoons she'd never admit to watching. 'Maybe if I closed my eyes and imagined I'm in the Talon.' Chloe shook her head. She was almost on a first name basis with the doctors in the local hospital, no need to go back there yet.  
  
So she settled for inhaling the bitter scent. It was marginally safer. 'Damn Lex. The Sadistic Freak. He did this deliberately. Just to piss me off.'  
  
"Penny for your thoughts?" Lex sat down opposite her.  
  
"How about reopening the Talon, then I'll tell you."  
  
"No deal." Lex smirked.  
  
"Fine." Chloe replied, returning to her thoughts.  
  
Lex watched her a while before leaning over and touching her coffee cup. "Its cold. You haven't touched it."  
  
"Yeah well I don't have a death wish."  
  
"Your exaggerating. Their coffee isn't going to kill you." Lex told her.  
  
"Yet I note you don't have a cup." Chloe observed.  
  
"How would it look, the owner of a coffee shop drinking the opposition's coffee?"  
  
"Oh please. I'm like the ambassador for your shop, all I'm missing is the sash and button. Yet here I am."  
  
"You and your untouched coffee."  
  
"You're a smartass."  
  
"I've never heard that before." Lex smirked.  
  
"Yeah, and I'm head cheerleader of the pompom brigade." Chloe rolled her eyes.  
  
"Remind me to come to your practices."  
  
"Lex, this is getting old, fast." Chloe told him in all seriousness. "You knew what this would do to me, why did you do it??" Chloe demanded.  
  
"Yes, I knew this would happen, so that's why I smuggled a few bags of your favourite coffee beans out of the carton before I closed shop yesterday." Lex told her.  
  
"You what?? And when were you planning on telling me about this?"  
  
"I just did."  
  
"But I threw a tantrum back at your house!! Why didn't you tell me then?" Chloe asked.  
  
"I wanted to see how long you would last without making at least one threat on my life."  
  
"But I didn't threaten you." Chloe said, confused.  
  
"I felt one coming."  
  
"True." Chloe confessed. "You were about one argument away from having this spoon in your throat."  
  
"Good to know." Lex said, taking the spoon from her hand and setting it on his side of the table, along with any other potentially lethal objects.  
  
"Where is the coffee?" Chloe asked.  
  
"Back at my place."  
  
"And you couldn't have told me when I was there?"  
  
"Let's go, I'll give you a ride there."  
  
"I have my car." Chloe told him.  
  
"Just get in the car." Lex told her walking out of the shop. 


	2. Coffee

Lex watched Chloe out of the corner of his eye; she was done with idly staring out the window and had moved up to tapping her thigh impatiently. "Could you drive any slower?" She asked as her tapping increased speed.  
  
"Let's see." Lex slowed his car from the break-neck speed he had been driving, to about 10 miles an hour when his gates were insight.  
  
"Lex. I swear to god, if you don't get there soon I'll-"  
  
"You'll what? Walk?"  
  
"Well, it'll be faster than this!" Chloe exclaimed.  
  
Lex sped up to his usual speed and smirked, wondering why he hadn't gotten to know her better sooner.  
  
"So." Chloe started when Lex was driving at a speed that suited her. "What possessed you to smuggle out the coffee bags for me?"  
  
"Aside from the fact that I knew you would have rammed that spoon down my throat?"  
  
"That was because you were being an asshole." Chloe reasoned. "Not for closing the Talon."  
  
"Right. Well then, I thought it was time that we got to know each other better." They were just outside the gates and Chloe was all but out of the car. "Hold on." Lex said reaching over to grab her hand to prevent her from opening the door. Her hand was moving to unbuckle her seat belt and his hand landed on her thigh.  
  
"You couldn't wait to get out of the car to get to know me better?" Chloe smirked.  
  
Lex smirked back. "Your hand moved. Now could you wait until we are inside the gates until you make a run for the coffee?"  
  
"I think I can. But hurry."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Once they were seated inside and Marc, one of Lex's servants, was making their latte's, Lex begun his round of coffee conversation. "So, why are you so desperate to have coffee, aside from the obvious addiction?"  
  
"Well, I was working on the Torch all yesterday, and decided that I could last a day without coffee. And then today I found out that you had closed the Talon for three days, I thought I was going to die without four days of coffee." Chloe explained.  
  
"Right." Lex accepted his cup from Marc, but watched as Chloe drank half the beverage in one gulp.  
  
Marc smiled, not waiting for orders, and went about making another.  
  
"Whoever invented coffee should be made a god." Chloe closed her eyes, savouring the taste.  
  
"I think whoever it is would be dead by now." Lex responded softly, watching her sit happily in his house, his kitchen, with her favourite drink and realised he was falling for her. Every instinct in his body was telling him to push her away, but she was too good to lose.  
  
"May they rest in peace." Chloe laughed opening her eyes.  
  
Lex averted his eyes quickly and made more light talk, so he could watch her expressions change as she spoke. About an hour into the conversation, they had moved to what passed for a living room, and Lex had taken to watching her hands. They flew in the air around her when she was talking about anything that she had a strong views on, and they rested lightly on her star necklace when he would ask a question that she viewed as too personal to be answered, and a soft reply that Lex would often recognise as something that he would say would follow. But when she was shy, the hands ceased all movement and rested in her lap.  
  
As they were right now. Lex hadn't said anything for awhile, so he knew he wasn't responsible, so he wondered what was coming.  
  
"I haven't thanked you for this have I?" Chloe smiled at her hands. "Thank you." She looked over at him and gave him a bright smile.  
  
Lex moved over on the sofa they shared, so he was sitting right next to her. "There are no thanks necessary." 'It's time to lay your cards on the table,' Lex thought. He picked up her hand and played with the silver ring on her middle ringer. Off her confused look, he continued. "It's time that I confessed." He looked her in the eyes. "I have feelings for you. I have since I saw you in the torch office, the first day I met you, and they've grown with everyday that I saw you. I've only now figured out that I like you, as more than my snarky reporter friend, I can only hope you feel the same."  
  
"Wow. Okay, this is headed in a different direction that I thought it was." Chloe admitted. She saw Lex close his eyes and realised he was expecting to be rejected. So she leant forward and placed a light kiss on his lips. Just as she was about to pull away, he leaned forward and placed his hands on her back and pulled her closer to him.  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
I'm update soon... As soon as I get over my writers block 


End file.
